Let me prefix this entry, by saying this might not be a bug, but might simply not being able to find adequate documentation. What I am trying to do is convert UTF8 encoded CSV files into a compressed spreadsheet format. The simpliest way to try this is: oocalc --headless --convert-to ods *.csv The output from this command ends up being huge, because it is uncompressed XML. However, some formats will give a binary output such as: oocalc --headless --convert-to xls *.csv Either way, I observe all the non-ASCII-7 characters are mangled in the output files. I am able to successfully convert files when using the UI, but for a large number of files, that is very slow... It seems it should be possible to specify an input filter that works, it is just none of the websites I found are documenting the correct parameters to use for UTF8 comma separate files.
I found the solution is the comments for bug 36313. I turns out UTF8 needs to be the last input filter value, not the first as shown in many of the examples... Upon careful reading of 36313, I've concluded my bug is a duplicate of that bug.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 36313 ***